Why are there no Industrial Wind Complexes in Toronto? Ontario Place Grounds, would be perfect!

August 25, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

TIME TO TURN THE TABLES ON WIND PROPONENTS WHO ACCUSE OPPONENTS OF ‘NIMBYISM’.

It’s astounding to read these days how pleased with themselves liberals are that the Wynne Ont gov’t is remaining steadfast in their refusal to amend the Green Energy Act in any meaningful way. It’s as easy as water off a ducks back for these progressives to delight in calling opponents to Industrial Wind Turbines as NIMBY’s and having democracy essentially waived to accomplish the policy goals backed by the GEA.

I only have this to say;

I want all these cheering Liberals to consider this;

Take your worst nightmare of a conservative leader. An amalgam of the very worst of Harper. Harris, throw in a little Ralph Klein and some Tea Party Timmy Hudak. I can sense your blood pressure rising as I write this. Oh the horror.
In the Legislature, a new bill is to be introduced called the “Nuclear Waste Recovery Act”

It will allow land owners to store nuclear waste on their properties until at such time facilities are available to neutralize the radioactive waste. Of course a setback of 550 metres would be required to non- participating “receptors” Land owners would negotiate 20 year contracts with the private companies running the nuclear facilities such as Bruce , Darlington and Pickering. Big time subsidies from the government ensure that developers and landowners alike are lining up out the door to cash in. Industrial Park areas sprinkled about the GTA sound like swell places to make this work.

Facilities that would eventually deal with the waste will be developed and the process of nuetralizing all that radioactive material would come online. The program would be a model to the world and create 50,000 jobs, ( Actually, this program could actually have a better shot at creating said number of jobs.) lowering the unemployment rate in the GTA which at present is above the national average.

So, developers with empty space in industrial parks in say, Scarborough, Pickering, North York or Mississauga, could apply for this and as long as they’re 550metres from residential areas, hey, it’s game on.

In addition, a special urban home owner program will be enacted. This unique initiative would allow home owners in large urban areas to sign contracts allowing a special individual-sized container of nuclear waste to be buried in their backyards. For doing this, each home owner will be paid $5,000 a year for 25 years. There will be no setback distances, because the government has done it’s homework and found numerous experts in the nuclear field who have testified that these containers are 100% safe. No neighbourhood input or objections would be allowed, since “nimbyism” will not be tolerated.

I sense it could face some opposition. Municipal governments would complain as their constituents would be going apoplectic over a nuclear waste facility in their neighborhood. Proponents, funded by Big Nuclear, would just refer to them as NIMBY’s. It would slowly dawn upon these residents that the NWR act strips away all municipalities rights to oppose this very much needed service.

Residents would come armed with health studies, but those dastardly conservatives in power have studies of their own citing that their own Medical Officer Of Health has signed off on the policy and states that there is “No significant hazard to health.” Tribunals set up to hear citizens grievances, would be stacked by the conservatives with sympathetic board members making any challenge an exercise in futility.

So now, with some facilities now open, reports of radiation leaks are ubiqutous. MoE will come to investigate and essentially find nothing since they’re not even equipped to measure anything. Wildlife , such as it is would be struggling to adapt to these conditions. Local human health could also suffer an immeasurable toll. Meanwhile, the developers and landowners are far,far away counting and folding all that taxpayer booty.

My point to all you liberal cheerleaders is that you’re all for this when it suits you. When it’s on the other foot, you’d be unspooling. My contention is that no government, be it Liberal ,Conservative or otherwise should EVER be able to wield this kind of power over it’s citizens, urban or rural.

Paul Kuster

Liberal Government Won’t Put a Wind Project Near Their Home in Toronto!!!

August 24, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Ontario Place Grounds Would be Perfect For A Wind Project!

Bow Lake makes wind farm fight tough: MILLS

By Tom Mills, Sault Star

Saturday, August 23, 2014

With a government that continues to stack the procedural and legal deck against those who oppose the intrusion of wind farms on their neighbourhoods, you might expect to see turbines almost everywhere.

But it would take a sharp eye to spot one anywhere near the GTA. Wind-energy-watching is much easier in Algoma, Bruce and Chatham-Kent, which house about a third of Ontario’s turbines.

In a past column I mentioned the Toronto waterfront, where offshore wind turbines were seriously proposed. Then a Liberal government moratorium in 2011 put an end to the foolish notion of locating green energy generation where it might be consumed.

I’ve also suggested turbines be put in shopping malls, industrial parks and other places of large-scale ugliness within the bounds of the Greater Toronto Area.

One reader came up with the very feasible idea of lining Highway 400 with turbines from Barrie to Canada’s Wonderland.

Last week I found a couple of new prime locations: the Niagara Escarpment and the quaint main street of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Both seem to have wind in abundance.

Now NOTL, whose strict bylaws preserving the character of the historic village were strong enough to give a McDonalds sign fallen arches, would break out the 1812 muskets at the idea of blades whooshing o’er the fudge shoppes and inns.

And wine country doubtless would sour at the idea of blinking red lights festooning the limestone ridge like a strand of tacky Christmas lights.

But could they do much about it? I doubt it.

Preposterous, you say?

Well, a ruling last month by an environment ministry review panel on a wind farm north of Sault Ste. Marie makes it more daunting for anyone anywhere in Ontario to oppose a wind farm.

That panel shot down attempts by seasonal resident James Fata and others to block installation of turbines on a scenic hill area near the Lake Superior coast, the Bow Lake wind farm near Montreal River.

In the process, it pared down the grounds anyone could use to oppose a wind farm.

Both the approval and appeal processes set up by Ontario’s MOE already were heavily weighted against wind farm opponents.

As the tribunal’s decision notes, “An appellant is required to prove . . . that a project will cause the harm,” not just raise “the potential for harm.” No onus on the developer.

That seems akin to the government allowing pharmaceutical companies to dump drugs on the market and then requiring consumers to conduct scientific studies proving them to be unsafe.

And a tribunal is severely limited as to what reasons it can allow an opponent to use to object to a wind farm. None of that “scenic beauty” stuff for our ministry, even though this particular tribunal granted that the Superior landscape is “iconic.”

But the tribunal narrowed things even more by chopping references to property devaluation, economic impact on the tourism industry and a “prejudiced and unilateral consultation process” from the appeal.

That left Fata et al trying to prove turbines cause indisputably serious harm to human health, something many others have tried and failed, or latching on to an animal species that would be seriously and irreversibly harmed, in this case some little brown bats.

Evidence at the hearing suggested while turbines would doom a whole bunch of little brown bats, there are plenty more little brown bats where those came from.

And the tribunal rejected arguments by people such as adventurer Joanie McGuffin that the visual and social impacts of wind turbines on a natural landscape so striking as to have been featured by the historic Group of Seven artists could result in human health consequences.

So I’d say that leaves folks in Niagara with not too many weapons in their arsenal if some incentive-hungry developer proposed a wind farm.

Scenic beauty? Forget it. Historical significance? Nope. Tourist industry? Not likely.

About all that could stop a wind farm on NOTL’s Queen Street or along the escarpment is the fact that those places lie in the Greater Toronto Area’s back yard, much beloved of Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government.

Yep. That should do it.

Email tom.mills@sunmedia.ca to contact Tom Mills. Comment at saultstar.com.

Finally…the Scam is Being Exposed! They Know They Are NOT Helping Our Environment!

August 21, 2014August 21, 2014 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

It’s about something

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Bob Greene

Ms. McCarthy is now saying that the Clean Power Plan is not about climate. Ms. McCarthy’s July 23 testimony on the Clean Power Plan was that it is not about climate or pollution control. This contradicts the June testimony, the web site and the federal register notice. So it’s about something.

From the Bonner Cohen, Heartland.org:

EPA’s recently announced restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions have nothing to do with reducing pollution, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted in Senate hearings. Instead, said McCarthy, EPA imposed the restrictions based on a belief imposing expensive renewable energy on the electricity marketplace will stimulate the economy.

‘Not About Pollution Control’
“The great thing about this proposal is that it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control,” McCarthy told the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee July 23. “It’s about increased efficiency at our plants. It’s about investment in renewables and clean energy. It’s about investments in people’s ability to lower their electricity bills by getting good, clean, efficient appliances, homes, rental units.”

McCarthy’s comments came as a shock to utilities facing steep costs attempting to comply with the proposed restrictions. The comments also came at a time when the Obama administration’s prior EPA restrictions have pushed U.S. electricity prices to an all-time record high.

Contradicts Prior Testimony
McCarthy’s Senate testimony represents a significant departure from the way EPA defended its proposal before lawmakers just a month earlier. At a June hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Acting Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Janet McCabe offered a different explanation. Citing Section 111 (b) of the Clean Air Act, which authorizes EPA to regulate certain pollutants, McCabe made that argument in her testimony:

“Chairman Upton, this is not an energy plan. This is a rule done within the four corners of 111 (b) that looks to the best system of emission reduction to reduce emission.… This is a pollution control rule as EPA has traditionally done under section 111 (d).”

McCarthy’s comment didn’t escape the attention of climatologist Roy Spencer.

“This gaffe could come back to bite the EPA,” Spencer wrote on his website. “The Endangerment Finding was all about the negative effect of ‘carbon pollution’ on the environment. Now we find out ‘this is not about pollution control’?”

In her testimony, McCarthy repeatedly emphasized EPA views its rule as an investment opportunity for the business community, while downplaying the cost it would impose on consumers.

“This is an investment strategy that will not just reduce carbon pollution but will position the United States to continue to grow economically in every state, based on their own design,” she said.

So CO2 restrictions are not about climate and all the supposed health benefits are not about pollution control, they are energy efficiency, jobs and economic programs. Sounds like EPA is getting caught with a reg that obviously doesn’t do what they said it was designed to do and are scrambling.

Aussie Politicians, We Can ALL Be Proud Of!!!

August 18, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey & Mathias Cormann: Natural Born RET Killers

August 18, 2014 by stopthesethings

Tony Abbott has made no secret of his eagerness to do away with the most colossal corporate welfare scheme in the history of the Commonwealth (see our posts here and here and here).

And his Treasurer, Joe Hockey has pinned his colours to the mast as someone who can’t stand wind farms – and whose political mission is to bring the “age of entitlement” to an end, which includes the stream of subsidies directed at wind power outfits (see our posts here and here).

The Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann made his disdain for the great wind power fraud known by joining Hockey to prevent the Clean Energy Finance Corporation signing up anymore unsecured loans to wind power outfits (see our post here).

So it comes as no surprise that Abbott, Hockey and Cormann would team up as Natural Born RET Killers. Here’s the Australian Financial Review heralding the beginning of the end for the mandatory RET and, with it, the end of the great Australian wind power fraud.

Abbott’s plan to axe RET
Australian Financial Review
Phillip Coorey
18 August 2014

The federal government is moving towards abolishing the Renewable Energy Target rather than scaling it back in a move that will cost almost $11 billion in proposed investment and which is at odds with the views of its own Environment Minister.

The Australian Financial Review understands Prime Minister Tony Abbott has asked businessman Dick Warburton, whom he handpicked after the election to review the RET, to do more work on the option of terminating the target altogether. This was after Mr Warburton’s review leant towards scaling back the RET.

Sources said Environment Minister Greg Hunt, who advocated scaling back the RET as a compromise, has been sidelined from the process and is understood to be unhappy. They said Mr Abbott, Treasurer Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann are pushing the issue now.

A government source said when the government announced its decision, possibly before the end of this month, it was now “more likely” the RET will be abolished under a so-called “closed to new entrants scenario” in which existing contracts only would be honoured.

Given Clive Palmer has vowed to block any change to the RET until after the 2016 election, it remains unclear when the government could declare the RET terminated.

Independent modelling commissioned by the Climate Institute and other environmental groups, and which will be released Monday, found that under the termination scenario, coal-fired power generators would reap an extra $25 billion in profits between 2015 and 2030.

There would be no reduction to household power prices and carbon emissions would climb by 15 million tonnes a year on the back of a 9 percent increase in coal-fired power.

Diminished investments

Abolishing the RET would diminish investment in renewable energy by $10.6 billion, said the modelling, conducted by consulting firm Jacobs.

Conceived under the Howard government, the RET mandated that 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2020. The Abbott government has been lobbied heavily by the business and energy sectors to abolish or water it down as renewable energy gained a larger than expected share of the electricity market.

When the RET was first conceived, it was envisaged 20 per cent of total power production by 2020 would equate to 41,000 gigawatt/hours of renewable energy produced each year.

Under the scaleback favoured by Mr Hunt, annual production of renewable energy in 2020 would be reduced to 27,000GWh. But this would still amount to 20 per cent of total energy production because forecast total energy production for 2020 had been downgraded due to the decline in manufacturing, especially the collapse of the car industry and the closure of two aluminium smelters. This is known as the “real 20 per cent” option.

The abolition proposal would reduce renewable energy production in 2020 to 16,000GWh.

It is understood Mr Abbott’s office was briefed on the recommendations of the Warburton review in late July. The review found the RET did not add significantly to household and commercial power bills, as its critics, including Mr Abbott, had argued, and that it should be scaled back to the real 20 per cent model as advocated by Mr Hunt.

With the government favouring termination, Mr Warburton was asked to give the option more consideration and his report is expected this week.

Energy oversupply

The government source said the market was oversupplied with energy and there was no longer any cause for a mandated use of any specific type of power. The source said while there would be investment losses if the RET was abolished, or even scaled back, investors “would have to have been blind to know this wasn’t coming”.

Miles George, managing director of renewable company Infigen Energy, said either scaling back or terminating the RET “would be devastating”.

He said the creation of sovereign risk would be significant and the very issue had been raised by prospective foreign investors, including Canadian pension funds which Mr Abbott sought to woo when abroad in June.

“Infigen’s shareholder base of over 20,000 investors has invested in renewable energy in Australia on the basis of a fixed target of 41,000 GWh by 2020,” Mr George said. “This is no different to investors in private public partnerships acquiring a toll road concession, or a port lease.

“If the Government pulls the rug from under institutional investors in renewable energy we shouldn’t expect those investors to come back to buy other infrastructure assets here, including the electricity networks and generation assets that the governments of NSW and Queensland are proposing to sell or lease.”
Australian Financial Review

The AFR touts the wind industry line about “diminished investments”, as if wind power outfits are lining up to make an outright, “no-strings-attached” gift of $10.6 billion to Australian power consumers.

On that spin, Australia’s power punters are meant to fear the “loss” and shed a tear for cowboys like Infigen (aka Babcock & Brown) who are, apparently, just itching to give their investors’ money away.

Of course, like every investment, those stumping up the capital will only do so where a juicy return is on offer; and, under the current 41,000 GWh target set by the mandatory RET, the returns promised to be very “juicy”, indeed. Until now.

So let’s have a look at just who ends up paying for the promised (or, rather, threatened) $billions in wind power investment: we’ll call it $10 billion for ease of reference.

Before we kick off, there are a few things to note.

First, is that around 50% of the value of the threatened “investment” will go to foreign turbine manufacturers in China, India and Denmark. So that sends at least $5 billion offshore; adding to Australia’s current account deficit.

Next, is the fact that the great bulk of any wind power “investment” is underwritten by all Australian power consumers via the mandatory RET – as detailed below.

And it needs to borne in mind that any “investment” in wind power generation capacity has to be matched with an equal investment in fossil fuel generation capacity (principally fast-start-up Open Cycle Gas Turbines) to provide power to balance the grid (the need for which increases – along with the need for additional spinning reserve held by base-load thermal generators – due to the wild fluctuations in wind power output – see our post here) and to accommodate routine, but unpredictable, collapses in wind power output (our posts here and hereand here and here and here and here and here and here).

The greater the amount of installed wind power capacity, the greater the need for highly inefficient OCGTs – the installation of which needs to be financed, allowing for returns to those providing the capital: a cost that is never included in calculations accounting for the costs attached to wind power generation (see our post here).

As noted by the AFR, the Australian energy market is oversupplied, which means any further investment in an unpredictable and unreliable source like wind power will simply cause further and substantial increases in retail power prices, additional grid instability and energy market chaos – precisely the circumstances the Germans now find themselves in, after years of runaway renewable energy policy (see our post here).

An “investment” NOT a “gift”

Any investor naturally looks for a return on a capital investment. Ideally, that return exceeds bank interest and – if there is any risk involved – accounts for that risk by way of higher returns. Investors in wind farm projects aim for a gross return on the capital invested in the order of 20% per annum.

That means that the investors stumping up $10 billion to build new wind power capacity will be looking to recover $2 billion from power consumers each and every year to achieve that level of return: returns on wind power investments can only be recouped via income received from power sales – there is NO other source of revenue.

So, rather than being the objects of $10 billion in wind industry largesse, power consumers are being lined up for an enormous, additional and – because there is already ample generating capacity to meet (declining) demand well into the future – completely unnecessary $2 billion hit in the hip pocket each and every year.

A fair slice of the $2 billion annual return on investment required by investors would be recouped via power bills in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs): a Federal Tax on all Australian electricity consumers. RECs are issued to wind power generators and transferred to retailers under the Power Purchase Agreements signed between them (see our post here).

Which brings us to another furphy trotted out in the AFR piece – based on “modelling” by wind industry cheer squad, the Climate Institute – that the mandatory RET hasn’t had any significant effect on retail power prices; and that scrapping it would not result in any decrease in power bills.

As we’ve just pointed out, the $10 billion in threatened wind power investment would, alone, add $2 billion to Australian power bills each and every year: no return, no “investment” – simple as that.

The true cost of the mandatory RET

As is the style of the wind industry and its parasites, whenever they’re pitching about the “wonders” of wind it’s all done with “modelling” and never with real numbers. Smoke and mirrors stuff, using assumptions that never hold water – and always ignoring the terms of the legislation upon which the whole rort depends.

So – let’s forget about “models” – based on nonsensical and unjustified assumptions – and simply apply a little old fashioned arithmetic to the provisions that make up the mandatory RET.

Putting aside the hidden costs of providing fossil fuel back up to cover the occasions when wind power output plummets every day – and for days on end (see our post here); putting aside the need for a duplicated network to carry wind power from the back blocks to urban markets (seeour post here); putting aside the cost of running highly inefficient Open Cycle Gas Turbines to cover wind power “outages” (see our post here), for the purpose of this argument let’s just focus on the cost of Renewable Energy Certificates and their bedmate – the mandated shortfall charge.

Under the mandatory RET – retailers are fined $65 per MWh for every MW they fall below the mandated annual target: what’s called the “shortfall charge” – follow the links here and here. The shortfall charge is directed straight to the Commonwealth, ending up as general revenue.

The alternative is to buy RECs (which is done via the retailer’s PPA with the wind power generator) and surrender them as proof that the retailer has purchased a MWh of renewable energy.

Wind power generators are issued 1 REC for every MWh of power dispatched to the grid – and this deal continues until 2031: the operator of a turbine erected in 2005 will receive RECs (1 per MWh dispatched) each and every year for 26 years.

Since the RET began in April 2001, over 195 million RECs have been created – worth more than $8 billion – the cost of which has all been added to our power bills.

The cost of the REC is ultimately borne by retail customers and, therefore, constitutes a Federal Tax on all Australian electricity consumers (see our post here).

Time for a little arithmetic.

If no RECs were purchased, retailers would simply be hit with the $65 per MWh shortfall charge on the entire figure set by the mandatory RET legislation (see the link here).

That cost alone would add $2.665 billion to power bills annually from 2020 to 2031.

Alternatively, if sufficient RECs to satisfy the target were purchased at $100, say, the cost rises to $4.1 billion a year from 2020 through to 2031.

Year	RET in MWh (millions)	Shortfall Charge (or RECs) @ $65	RECs @ $100
2014	16.1	$1,046,500,000	$1,610,000,000
2015	18	$1,117,000,000	$1,800,000,000
2016	22.6	$1,469,000,000	$2,260,000,000
2017	27.2	$1,768,000,000	$2,720,000,000
2018	31.8	$2,067,000,000	$3,180,000,000
2019	36.4	$2,366,000,000	$3,640,000,000
2020	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2021	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2022	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2023	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2024	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2025	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2026	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2027	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2028	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2029	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
2030	41	$2,665,000,000	$4,100,000,000
	Total	$36,483,500,000	$56,210,000,000

RECs are currently trading around $30, but, as the target starts to bite from 2017, the price is expected to reach $90 and is tipped to reach $100 beyond that.

The shortfall charge (as a fine) is a cost that the retailer can’t claim as a legitimate tax deduction, whereas the REC is – this places an added value on the REC to the extent that its face value can reduce the retailer’s taxable income. At a minimum then, RECs can be expected to trade at a figure at least equal to the shortfall charge. But with the tax benefit attached, RECs would be worth at least $94 – based on a shortfall charge of $65.

At the bottom end, this means the value of RECs surrendered (and/or the shortfall charge applied) will add over $36 billion to power bills over the next 17 years. At the top end, the figure (assuming RECs hit $100 by 2017) will exceed $50 billion.

These figures represent the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the Commonwealth: a transfer that comes at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable in society; struggling manufacturing businesses, real jobs and families. To call the mandatory RET obscene is pure understatement. No single policy has ever threatened to cost so much for nothing in return.

It’s these hard and fast facts that have united the PM, his Treasurer and Finance Minister with the intention of killing the mandatory RET outright; and the vast majority of the Coalition are right behind them. The sooner the Coalition axe it, the better. The mandatory RET must go now.

Fracking is a Far Greener Choice, than Wind!

August 15, 2014 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

WIND POWER REQUIRES 700 TIMES AS MUCH LAND AS FRACKING

One of the weirder facts of contemporary life is that “environmentalists” generally prefer wind power to fracking. Unless you suffer from an anti-carbon fetish, there is no comparison, as the Telegraph reports:

A wind farm requires 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site, according to analysis by the energy department’s recently-departed chief scientific advisor. …

Prof MacKay said that a shale gas site uses less land and “creates the least visual intrusion”, compared with a wind farm or solar farm capable of producing the equivalent amount of energy over 25 years.

This is not surprising. Wind power is generally feeble, and intermittent at best.

A spokesman for Cuadrilla said: “This comparison by David MacKay clearly demonstrates that, contrary to what some people may assume, exploration for and production of shale gas would actually have less far less impact on the countryside than wind or solar energy.

“To supply an equivalent amount of energy a shale gas site would occupy just a small fraction of the land required for either wind or solar sites, would have less visual intrusion and significantly less transport impact, given that in the UK we do not anticipate having to truck water to our proposed sites.”

In my experience, many environmentalists don’t actually care much about the environment. “Environmentalism” is most often a cover for something else–either a financial interest, or a general yearning for the government (controlled by them, of course) to have more power over the people they don’t like. There are, no doubt, a few honorable exceptions. But the vast disproportion in environmental impact between fracking and wind power illustrates the point.

Wind is a Really Bad Idea…..Former GE Executive, Tells All!

August 15, 2014 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

AUGUST 15, 2014 BY SAVEOURSKYLINEOHIO

Former GE executive tells us why BigWind is a BAD idea

GE can’t be happy about this, but retirement can loosen the noose that limits free speech…

In a casual conversation, I was asked why wind energy is a bad idea. Once again, I realized that a one or two-word answer could not convey a readily understandable and accurate picture of wind energy.

This article will try to provide such an answer in a few hundred words, where one or two won’t suffice.

There are essentially four reasons why wind energy is a bad idea.

It is unreliable. It is very, very expensive. It produces electricity when it isn’t needed. It has environmental issues.

Wind can only produce electricity when the wind is blowing at between 6 mph and 55 mph. Above 6 mph, it gradually increases its output until it reaches a maximum output at around 35 mph. Above 55 mph, the wind turbine is shut down to prevent damage to the turbine.

The wind can stop blowing abruptly, so backup power generation must be immediately available to replace the wind generated electricity, or the grid could collapse causing blackouts.

Typically, gas turbine generators are kept running 24/7 so they are available to be rapidly brought online.

A sufficient number of gas turbine generators must kept running at all times to be ready for when the wind stops blowing. This varies by region and on the reliability of day-ahead weather forecasts.

The electricity generated by wind has an intrinsic cost, based on leveled cost of electricity (LCOE) of around 11 cents per kWh. This compares with around 5 cents per kWh for natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plants and around 6 cents for coal-fired power plants.

But there are other costs for wind energy that are seldom taken into consideration, and not included in LCOE calculations….

Wind farms also produce electricity at night, when it isn’t needed.

This has resulted in the bizarre situation where the owners of wind farms have sold electricity at a loss, for example, actually paid the regional transmission organization (RTO) 1 cent per kWh, in order to collect the 2.2 cents per kWh subsidy.

More importantly, the nameplate ratings of wind turbines overstate the amount of electricity they can produce. Wind turbines in the United States have had a capacity factor of around 32%, or lower during the recent past.

Capacity factor is the amount of electricity a wind turbine, or any other power generation method, produces over a year, compared with how much it could produce using its nameplate rating.

Coal-powered and NGCC power plants typically have a capacity factor of around 85%, while nuclear power plants have a capacity factor of 90% or higher.

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) is constantly bragging about how many Megawatts (MW) are being installed, when wind turbine’s true ability to produce electricity is only one-third the amount claimed by the nameplate rating.

Essentially, wind turbines produce small amounts of electricity compared with the other methods….

via Why Wind Energy is a Bad Idea | Power For USA.

James Delingpole shares a Few “Inconvenient Truths”, About Tom Steyner

August 14, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

TOM STEYER’S EPIC GREEN FAIL: PART II

by JAMES DELINGPOLE 13 Aug 2014

Tom Steyer, the fossil-fuel powered hedge funder has suffered further setbacks on his $100 million mission to save the world from ‘global warming’ by destroying the US economy.

He is hoping to raise $50 million from left-wing environmentalist billionaire donors for his NextGen political action committee. But so far, it emerged at a renewable energy conference in Aspen, Colorado this week, he has managed to raise just $7 million.

“He wants to raise $50 million that he can match,” a conference organizer told FOX31 Denver. “Right now, he’s raised about $7 [million].

Steyer is continuing to put a brave face on affairs.

Acknowledging that some donors prefer to give to organizations other than NextGen, Steyer believes activists demanding action on climate change will have an impact on the November election. “The ultimate question will be will we have enough money to run the programs we need to run and the answer is yes,” Steyer said. “Definitely, yes.”

But prospective donors may have decided that Steyer is tainted beyond redemption by a string of recent revelations about his murky financial background. As Breitbart reported last month, a fair chunk of this green evangelist’s fortune came from his hedge fund Farallon Capital’s investments in the coal industry. With help from Steyer’s financing, coal production from Indonesia to China increased annually by 70 million tons – the equivalent, some experts have speculated, of around one melted glacier and thirty drowned baby polar bears per annum.

Though Steyer has since detached himself from his Big Coal financed hedge fund and claims to have seen the light, the suspicion remains that he is rather less interested in saving the planet than he is in lining his own pockets and those of fellow Democrats in the left wing Billionaires Club.

Consider, for example, his mutually beneficial dealings with Nancy Pelosi. Steyer has been a great supporter of the former House speaker, financially and politically. By strange coincidence, Steyer’s business projects have been boosted by around $1 billion in government aid, much of it announced by Pelosi herself.

In 2004, reports Free Beacon, Steyer’s Farallon Capital bought two million feet of commercial real estate in the Mission Bay area. At the time, according to the San Francisco Business Times, it was “decrepit and seemingly abandoned.”

But, reports the Daily Signal, with the help of fairy godmother Pelosi this soon changed. She waved her wand (made of yew, it is rumoured, like Lord Voldemort’s) and showered the area with taxpayer-funded gifts: a $942 million public transportation link between Mission Bay and downtown San Francisco; $10 million in stimulus funds for a Mission Bay biotech cluster; $25 million for the repair or removal of piers in the area. Steyer has claimed there is no link between his political donations and these government grants – but Farallon has certainly benefited handsomely from this non-arrangement.

Another of Steyer’s completely un-business-related enthusiasms is his fervent opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. This, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he has long had a stake in a rival pipeline called Kinder Morgan. Though he promised that he would divest himself of financial interests in Kinder Morgan by the end of 2013, it is not clear that he has yet done so.

Posted This To Prove that Wind Turbines are NOT Green!

August 13, 2014 / 1957chev / 3 Comments

In China, the true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment:

Pollution on a disastrous scale

By SIMON PARRY in China and ED DOUGLAS in Scotland

This toxic lake poisons Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It is what’s left behind after making the magnets for Britain’s latest wind turbines… and, as a special Live investigation reveals, is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem

The lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China, which as been dumped by the rare earth processing plants in the background

On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn.

Yan Man Jia Hong is a dedicated Communist. At 74, he still believes in his revolutionary heroes, but he despises the young local officials and entrepreneurs who have let this happen.

‘Chairman Mao was a hero and saved us,’ he says. ‘But these people only care about money. They have destroyed our lives.’

Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.

Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.

This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

Wind power’s uncertainties don’t end with intermittency. There is huge controversy about how much energy a wind farm will produce (Pictured above, wind turbines in Dun Law, Scotland)

Rusting pipelines meander for miles from factories processing rare earths in Baotou out to the man-made lake where, mixed with water, the foul-smelling radioactive waste from this industrial process is pumped day after day. No signposts and no paved roads lead here, and as we approach security guards shoo us away and tail us. When we finally break through the cordon and climb sand dunes to reach its brim, an apocalyptic sight greets us: a giant, secret toxic dump, made bigger by every wind turbine we build.

The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.

For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.

Retired farmer Su Bairen, 69, who led us to the lake, says it was initially a novelty – a multi-coloured pond set in farmland as early rare earth factories run by the state-owned Baogang group of companies began work in the Sixties.

‘At first it was just a hole in the ground,’ he says. ‘When it dried in the winter and summer, it turned into a black crust and children would play on it. Then one or two of them fell through and drowned in the sludge below. Since then, children have stayed away.’

As more factories sprang up, the banks grew higher, the lake grew larger and the stench and fumes grew more overwhelming.

‘It turned into a mountain that towered over us,’ says Mr Su. ‘Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken and die.’

People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.

Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found.

Since then, maybe because of pressure from the companies operating around the lake, which pump out waste 24 hours a day, the results of ongoing radiation and toxicity tests carried out on the lake have been kept secret and officials have refused to publicly acknowledge health risks to nearby villages.

There are 17 ‘rare earth metals’ – the name doesn’t mean they are necessarily in short supply; it refers to the fact that the metals occur in scattered deposits of minerals, rather than concentrated ores. Rare earth metals usually occur together, and, once mined, have to be separated.

Villagers Su Bairen, 69, and Yan Man Jia Hong, 74, stand on the edge of the six-mile-wide toxic lake in Baotou, China that has devastated their farmland and ruined the health of the people in their community

Neodymium is commonly used as part of a Neodymium-Iron-Boron alloy (Nd2Fe14B) which, thanks to its tetragonal crystal structure, is used to make the most powerful magnets in the world. Electric motors and generators rely on the basic principles of electromagnetism, and the stronger the magnets they use, the more efficient they can be. It’s been used in small quantities in common technologies for quite a long time – hi-fi speakers, hard drives and lasers, for example. But only with the rise of alternative energy solutions has neodymium really come to prominence, for use in hybrid cars and wind turbines. A direct-drive permanent-magnet generator for a top capacity wind turbine would use 4,400lb of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.

In the pollution-blighted city of Baotou, most people wear face masks everywhere they go.

‘You have to wear one otherwise the dust gets into your lungs and poisons you,’ our taxi driver tells us, pulling over so we can buy white cloth masks from a roadside hawker.

Posing as buyers, we visit Baotou Xijun Rare Earth Co Ltd. A large billboard in front of the factory shows an idyllic image of fields of sheep grazing in green fields with wind turbines in the background.

In a smartly appointed boardroom, Vice General Manager Cheng Qing tells us proudly that his company is the fourth biggest producer of rare earth metals in China, processing 30,000 tons a year. He leads us down to a complex of primitive workshops where workers with no protective clothing except for cotton gloves and face masks ladle molten rare earth from furnaces with temperatures of 1,000°C.

The result is 1.5kg bricks of neodymium, packed into blue barrels weighing 250kg each. Its price has more than doubled in the past year – it now costs around £80 per kilogram. So a 1.5kg block would be worth £120 – or more than a fortnight’s wages for the workers handling them. The waste from this highly toxic process ends up being pumped into the lake looming over Dalahai.

The state-owned Baogang Group, which operates most of the factories in Baotou, claims it invests tens of millions of pounds a year in environmental protection and processes the waste before it is discharged.

According to Du Youlu of Baogang’s safety and environmental protection department, seven million tons of waste a year was discharged into the lake, which is already 100ft high and growing by three feet each year.

In what appeared an attempt to shift responsibility onto China’s national leaders and their close control of the rare earths industry, he added: ‘The tailing is a national resource and China will ultimately decide what will be done with the lake.’

Jamie Choi, an expert on toxics for Greenpeace China, says villagers living near the lake face horrendous health risks from the carcinogenic and radioactive waste.

‘There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment. Ores are being extracted by pumping acid into the ground, and then they are processed using more acid and chemicals.

Inside the Baotou Xijun Rare Earth refinery in Baotou, where neodymium, essential in new wind turbine magnets, is processed

Finally they are dumped into tailing lakes that are often very poorly constructed and maintained. And throughout this process, large amounts of highly toxic acids, heavy metals and other chemicals are emitted into the air that people breathe, and leak into surface and ground water. Villagers rely on this for irrigation of their crops and for drinking water. Whenever we purchase products that contain rare earth metals, we are unknowingly taking part in massive environmental degradation and the destruction of communities.’

The fact that the wind-turbine industry relies on neodymium, which even in legal factories has a catastrophic environmental impact, is an irony Ms Choi acknowledges.

‘It is a real dilemma for environmentalists who want to see the growth of the industry,’ she says. ‘But we have the responsibility to recognise the environmental destruction that is being caused while making these wind turbines.’

It’s a long way from the grim conditions in Baotou to the raw beauty of the Monadhliath mountains in Scotland. But the environmental damage wind turbines cause will be felt here, too. These hills are the latest battleground in a war being fought all over Britain – and particularly in Scotland – between wind-farm developers and those opposed to them.

Cameron McNeish, a hill walker and TV presenter who lives in the Monadhliath, campaigned for almost a decade against the Dunmaglass wind farm before the Scottish government gave the go-ahead in December. Soon, 33 turbines will be erected on the hills north of the upper Findhorn valley.

McNeish is passionate about this landscape: ‘It’s vast and wild and isolated,’ he says. Huge empty spaces, however, are also perfect for wind turbines and unlike the nearby Cairngorms there are no landscape designations to protect this area. When the Labour government put in place the policy framework and subsidies to boost renewable energy, the Monadhliath became a mouth-watering opportunity.

People have been trying to make real money from Scottish estates like Jack Hayward’s Dunmaglass. Hayward, a Bermuda-based property developer and former chairman of Wolverhampton Wanderers, struck a deal with renewable energy company RES which, campaigners believe, will earn the estate an estimated £9 million over the next 25 years.

Each of the turbines at Dunmaglass will require servicing, which means a network of new and improved roads 20 miles long being built across the hills. They also need 1,500 tons of concrete foundations to keep them upright in a strong wind, which will scar the area.

Dunmaglass is just one among scores of wind farms in Scotland with planning permission. Scores more are still in the planning system. There are currently 3,153 turbines in the UK overall, with a maximum capacity of 5,203 megawatts.

Around half of them are in Scotland. First Minister Alex Salmond and the Scottish government have said they want to get 80 per cent of Scotland’s electricity from renewables by 2020, which means more turbines spread across the country’s hills and moors.

Many environmental pressure groups share Salmond’s view. Friends of the Earth opposes the Arctic being ruined by oil extraction, but when it comes to damaging Scotland’s wilderness with concrete and hundreds of miles of roads, they say wind energy is worth it as the impact of climate change has to be faced.

‘No way of generating energy is 100 per cent clean and problem-free,’ says Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns at Friends of the Earth.

‘Wind energy causes far fewer problems than coal, gas or nuclear. If we don’t invest in green energy, business experts have warned that future generations will be landed with a bill that will dwarf the current financial crisis. But we need to ensure the use of materials like neodymium and concrete is kept to a minimum, that turbines use recycled materials wherever possible and that they are carefully sited to the reduce the already minimal impact on bird populations.’

But Helen McDade, head of policy at the John Muir Trust, a small but feisty campaign group dedicated to protecting Scotland’s wild lands, also points out that leaving aside the damage to the landscape, nobody is really sure how much carbon is being released by the renewable energy construction boom. Peat moors lock up huge amounts of carbon, which gets released when it’s drained to put up a turbine.

Environmental considerations aside, as the percentage of electricity generated by wind increases, renewable energy is coming under a lot more scrutiny now for one simple reason – money. We pay extra for wind power – around twice as much – because it can’t compete with other forms of electricity generation. Under the Renewable Obligation (RO), suppliers have to buy a percentage of their electricity from renewable generators and can hand that cost on to consumers. If they don’t, they pay a fine instead.

One unit cell of Nd2Fe14b, the alloy used in neodymium magnets. The structure of the atoms gives the alloy its magnetic strength, due to a phenomenon known as magnetocrystalline anisotropy

There’s a simple beauty about RO for the government. Even though it’s defined as a tax, it doesn’t come out of pay packets but is stuck on our electricity bills. That has made funding wind farms a lot easier for the government than more cost-effective energy-efficiency measures.

‘If you want a grant for an energy conservation project on your house,’ says Helen McDade, ‘the money comes from taxes. But investment for turbines comes from energy companies.’

Already, RO adds £1.4 billion to our bills each year to provide a pot of money to pay power companies for their ‘green’ electricity. By 2020, the figure will have risen to somewhere between £5 billion and £10 billion.

When he was Chancellor, Gordon Brown added another decade to these price guarantees, extending the RO scheme to 2037, guaranteeing the subsidy for more than a quarter of a century.

It’s not surprising there’s been an avalanche of wind-farm applications in the Highlands. Wind speeds are stronger, land is cheaper and the government loves you.

‘You go to a landowner,’ McDade says, ‘and offer him what is peanuts to an energy company yet keeps him happily on his estate so they can put up a wind farm, which in turn raises ordinary people’s electricity bills. There’s a social issue here that doesn’t get discussed.’

By 2020, environmental regulation will be adding 31 per cent to our bills. That’s £160 green tax out of an average annual bill of £512. As costs rise, more people will be driven into fuel poverty. When he was secretary of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband decreed that these increases should be offset by improvements in energy efficiencies.

It’s a view shared by his successor Chris Huhne, who says inflation due to RO will be effectively one per cent. Britain’s low-income families, facing hikes in petrol and food costs, will hope he’s right.

Individual households aren’t the only ones shouldering the costs. Industry faces an even bigger burden. By 2020, environmental charges will add 33 per cent to industry’s energy costs.

Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, says that, ‘Industry is getting the worst of both worlds. Around 80 per cent of the contracts for the new Thanet offshore wind farm (off the coast of Kent) went abroad, but the expensive electricity will be paid for here.’

Our current obsession with wind power, according to John Constable of energy think-tank the Renewable Energy Foundation, stems from the decision of the European Union on how to tackle climate change. Instead of just setting targets for reducing emissions, the EU told governments that by 2020, 15 per cent of all the energy we use must come from renewable sources.

Because of how we heat our houses and run our cars with gas and petrol, 30 per cent of electricity needs to come from renewables. And in the absence of other technologies, that means wind turbines. But there’s a structural flaw in the plan, which this winter has brutally exposed.

Study a graph of electricity consumption and it appears amazingly predictable, even down to reduced demand on public holidays. The graph for wind energy output, however, is far less predictable.

Take the figures for December, when we all shivered through sub-zero temperatures and wholesale electricity prices surged. Peak demand for the UK on 20 December was just over 60,000 megawatts. Maximum capacity for wind turbines throughout the UK is 5,891 megawatts, almost ten per cent of that peak demand figure.

Yet on December 20, because winds were light or non-existent, wind energy contributed a paltry 140 megawatts. Despite billions of pounds in investment and subsidies, Britain’s wind-turbine fleet was producing a feeble 2.43 per cent of its own capacity – and little more than 0.2 per cent of the nation’s electricity in the coldest month since records began.

The problems with the intermittency of wind energy are well known. A new network of cables linking ten countries around the North Sea is being suggested to smooth supply and take advantage of 140 gigawatts of offshore wind power. No one knows for sure how much this network will cost, although a figure of £25 billion has been mooted.

The government has also realised that when wind nears its target of 30 per cent, power companies will need more back-up to fill the gap when the wind doesn’t blow. Britain’s total capacity will need to rise from 76 gigawatts up to 120 gigawatts. That overcapacity will need another £50 billion and drive down prices when the wind’s blowing. Power companies are anxious about getting a decent price. Once again, consumers will pay.

Wind power’s uncertainties don’t end with intermittency. There is huge controversy about how much energy a wind farm will produce. Many developers claim their installations will achieve 30 per cent of their maximum output over the course of a year. More sober energy analysts suggest 26 per cent. But even that figure is starting to look generous. In December, the average figure was less than 21 per cent. In the year between October 2009 and September 2010, the average was 23.6 per cent, still nowhere near industry claims.

Then there’s the thorny question of how many homes new installations can power. According to wind farm developers like Scottish and Southern Electricity, a house uses 3.3MWh in a year. Lobby group RenewablesUK – formerly the British Wind Energy Association – gives a figure of 4.7MWh. In the Highlands electricity usage is even higher.

Last year, a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering warned that transforming our energy supply to produce a low-carbon economy would require the biggest investment and social change seen in peacetime. And yet Professor Sue Ion, who led the report, warned, ‘We are nowhere near having a plan.’

So, against the backdrop of environmental catastrophe in China and these less than attractive calculations, could the billions being thrown at wind farms be better spent? Undoubtedly, says John Constable.

‘The government is betting the farm on the throw of a die. What’s happening now is simply reckless.’

NUCLEAR, COAL, SOLAR, HYDRO, WIND: HOW THE ENERGY OPTIONS STACK UP

Enlarge

The British energy market is a hugely complicated and ever-changing landscape. We rely on a number of different sources for our energy – some more efficient than others, some more polluting than others.

Here, you can see how much energy each type contributes, how much they are predicted to contribute in 2020, how much carbon dioxide they generate and how efficient they are.

Renewable energy sources receive varying subsidies – which are added to our energy bills – as a result of the government’s Renewables Obligation, whereas ‘traditional’ sources do not.

Critically, government cost figures do not include subsidies, whereas our measure shows precisely how much money a power station receives for each megawatt-hour (MWh) it produces, which includes the price paid for the energy by the supplier and any applicable subsidy. This is an instant measure of an energy supply’s cost-efficiency; the lower the figure, the less that energy costs to produce.

Note: figures relate to UK energy production. Approximately seven per cent of our electricity comes from imports or other sources

August 13, 2014 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Community Opposition to Wind Farms Grows Because Wind Power is a Fraud

August 13, 2014 by stopthesethings

As community and political opposition to the great wind power fraud rolls and builds across the world, the charge that opponents are red-necked climate change deniers, infected with a dose of Not In My Backyard syndrome, starts to ring hollow.

Surely that charge can’t stick to each and every one of the 1,000 who signed the petition against the Mt Emerald wind farm proposal in Far North QLD – and the 92% of locals there who are bitterly opposed to it (see our post here)?

The same level of opposition arises at the local level – wherever wind power outfits are seeking to spear turbines into closely settled agricultural communities (see our post here).

Communities across the Southern Tablelands of NSW, locals are up in arms at efforts by wind farm outfits and the NSW Planning Department to sack and stack “community consultation committees” to ensure their development applications don’t face any real scrutiny. At Rye Park, 91% of locals are opposed to the wind farm being pitched by Epuron (see our post here). And communities like Tarago have erupted in anger at plans to destroy their lives and livelihoods (see our post here).

A little while back, the usual response from those opposed to wind farms was along the lines of: “we’re all in favour of renewable energy, so long as wind farms are built in the right place”.

But that was before people understood the phenomenal cost of the subsidies directed at wind power through the mandatory RET (see our post here) – and the impact on retail power prices (see our post here).

Fair minded country people are usually ready to give others the benefit of the doubt; and, not used to being lied to, accepted arguments pitched by wind power outfits about the “merits” of wind power: guff like “this wind farm will power 100,000 homes and save 10 million tonnes of CO2 emissions” (see our post here).

Not anymore.

Apart from the very few farmers that stand to profit by hosting turbines, rural communities have woken up to the fact that wind power – which can only ever be delivered at crazy, random intervals – is meaningless as a power source because it cannot and will never replace on-demand sources, such as hydro, gas and coal. And, as a consequence, that wind power cannot and will never reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector. The wind industry has never produced a shred of actual evidence to show it has; and the evidence that has been gathered shows intermittent wind power causing CO2 emissions to increase, not decrease (see this European paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here).

The realisation that the wind industry is built on series of unsustainable fictions has local communities angrier than ever and helps explain the remarkable numbers opposed: 90% is what’s fairly called a solid “majority” in anybody’s book.

This extract from the Mt Emerald survey captures some of the changing mood and the reasons for it.

These days, locals fighting wind power outfits are quick to challenge the wild and unsubstantiated environmental benefits touted by the developers; and will launch into them about the massive subsidies (ie the mandatory RET and the REC Tax) upon which the whole rort depends.

And it’s not because these people are “anti-environment” – it’s simply because they’ve woken up to the fact that wind power is pointless: both as a power source; and as a solution to CO2 emissions reduction. Here’s the Business Report with a take on the same tale from Britain and Europe.

Opposing wind generators is not anti-green
Business Report
Keith Bryer
8 August 2014

The intolerance of dissenting views by the Green Lobby is an unpleasant aspect of some of its members. They are perhaps unaware that tolerance of difference is a pillar of democracy and essential to individual freedom. But, whatever the reasons for vitriolic attacks on those against wind generators, environmentalists should take a closer look at Scottish opposition.

The most prominent in Scotland is the Windfarm Action Group. This group firmly states that everyone should take environmental responsibilities seriously. Whatever the causes of global warming and the varying views on what causes it, we must protect our earth and steward it wisely. It accepts a need to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. It wants cleaner, reliable energy. It supports sound scientific solutions with the goal of a cleaner, greener world.

No sane, sensible person can disagree with this. Even the most rabid environmentalist should agree too.

But this green group and 300 others like in Britain, plus another 400 in four EU countries, are against windfarms. They have gone into the subject thoroughly and engineers and scientists back up their conclusions.

To those who accuse them of merely being concerned with their own backyards and not the common good, they say add up our membership and you will find an awful lot of backyards. They are simply against what does not make good sense. They are convinced that wind power:

– Is not a technically legitimate solution.

– Does not meaningfully reduce CO2 emissions.

– Is not a commercially viable source of energy

– Is not environmentally responsible.

They believe there are better solutions to Britain’s energy concerns; solutions that meet scientific, economic, and environmental tests – and they have good reasons.

They point to the massive subsidies that windfarms received initially from the British taxpayer, money that attracts multinational corporations like flies to treacle. These subsidies added to the higher price ordinary British householders pay for their electricity.

This “stealth” tax was considerable. Most consumers were unaware that it was used to make wind-generated economically feasible on the one hand, and to fill the pockets of the manufacturers on the other.

This largess allowed wind-generation companies to make generous payments to landowners for permission to use their land. Such was the temptation that some Welsh farmers trying to raise sheep in arduous and scarcely profitable areas leapt at it.

One told his local newspaper that if it were not for the payments he got, he would have given up farming long ago.

The Wind farm Action Group quotes British government documents that say each wind turbine in Britain still receives an annual subsidy of more than £235,000 (R4.3 million). Britain has about 1,120 turbines in 90 parts of the country.

Among the usual objections to windfarms – they do not work all the time, they are noisy, kill birds and bats, and so on, the group adds a few more. For example, wind generators interfere with radar; dirt and flying insects affect their performance; ice build-up on the propellers affects performance even more; and wind turbulence further reduces their power production.

Finally, there is rust. Britain is a wet place but offshore wind turbines have salt to contend with as well. One Danish offshore wind farm had to be entirely dismantled for repair when it was only 18 months old.

Yes, groups such as these exist almost everywhere there are windfarms. They are often, like this Scottish one, as caring of the environment as anyone, perhaps more so. They are not only concerned with their own backyard; they are concerned about everyone’s backyard.

Yet they say this: “We believe that in time this [windfarms] may well be the greatest environmental disaster that mankind in panic, haste, folly and greed, has ever conceived.”

Britain is an old country and its language is full of folk wisdom like this: “No one ever built a windmill, if he could build a watermill.”

A more modern version of common sense would be: “Using wind power to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is akin to trying to empty the Atlantic Ocean with a teaspoon.”
BusinessReport

The mythical claims of the wind industry and its parasites have all be hinged on a perverse notion of “green” is good. But just what being “green” means these days is a matter of politics, not reason, fact or beneficial environmental outcomes: it’s become little more than a political fashion statement.

Ben Acheson writes for the Huffington Post. He’s also the Energy and Environment Policy Adviser and Parliamentary Assistant to Struan Stevenson MEP at the European Parliament in Brussels. For a taste of Ben’s views on wind power – see our post here.

Here’s Ben taking a swipe at faux “green” politics:

Residents of Slovenia Looking for Protection from Wind Turbines!

August 13, 2014 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Letter to Slovenia re Known Adverse Health Impacts of Wind Turbine Noise

Mr Diego Loredan, Chairman,
Ms Katarina Dea Zetko,

Civil Initiative for the Protection of Seno žeška Brda

I have been asked by Ms Katarina Dea Zetko to write to you, concerning the proposals to site large industrial wind turbines, 130 metres high, sited as close as 800 metres to homes in rural Slovenia. You are welcome to use this letter to educate others, and to make it publicly available.

In my opinion, based on my first hand knowledge of what has happened to wind turbine neighbours in Australia and elsewhere internationally, this is a recklessly irresponsible and dangerous plan and will inevitably result in serious adverse health effects for citizens of Slovenia who are neighbours of such turbines, out to significant distances. This is happening around the world, and I know of no reason why Slovenian citizens will not have the same adverse health impacts being reported internationally.

Breaches of UN Convention Against Torture

Decisions made by public officials to approve such an unsafe development, or to allow a development to continue to operate in spite of directly causing adverse health consequences such as sleep deprivation and “sensory bombardment from noise”, could be held to be breaches of the UN Convention Against Torture. Both “sleep deprivation” and “sensory bombardment from noise” have been acknowledged as methods of torture by the Physicians for Human Rights. TheUN Committee Against Torture has also specifically acknowledged that sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture.

The Committee against Torture (CAT) has noted that sleep deprivation used for prolonged periods constitutes a breach of the CAT, and is primarily used to break down the will of the detainee. Sleep deprivation can cause impaired memory and cognitive functioning, decreased short term memory, speech impairment, hallucinations, psychosis, lowered immunity, headaches, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, stress, anxiety and depression.”

Consequently, behaviour by public officials including specifically elected politicians and public servants in Slovenia, such as approving such a dangerous development, or allowing a wind development to continue to operate, whilst knowing that the turbines are causing adverse health effects from sleep deprivation and sensory bombardment with noise could be held to be a breaches of the UN Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, which I note Slovenia is a signatory to. Article 2 of the UN Convention Against Torture states:

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Background

By way of background, I am the CEO of the Waubra Foundation, which is a not for profit charity, established in Australia in 2010, to advocate for independent multidisciplinary research to investigate the reported health problems being reported by people exposed to infrasound and low frequency noise. Sources of that environmental noise include machinery used in coal mining, turbines used in gas fired power stations, compressors used in refrigeration units and field compressors used in extraction and transportation of gas, as well as industrial horizontal bladed wind turbines. I have worked full time, pro bono for the Foundation since July 2010.

My previous occupation and professional training was in rural general practice, where I worked as a medical practitioner in rural and remote environments in Australia.

I have been accepted to give expert evidence in legal tribunals on this subject in both my own country, Australia, and Canada, and have given evidence at multiple parliamentary inquiries in Australia. I have been involved in facilitating multidisciplinary research and acoustic data collection in Australia, and have been actively collaborating with concerned health practitioners, researchers and acousticians internationally for four years.

What Distance Is Safe?

We don’t know.

The necessary research has not yet been done. Unlike most other products, where prior product safety is established, the wind industry has never been required to show there are no adverse health effects. It will become evident, below, that in fact the wind industry are well aware of the serious health problems their products directly cause, and indeed that they have known for thirty years.

Clinically, we know the impacts of chronic sleep deprivation and chronic stress increase over time with cumulative exposure. These effects from exposure to excessive environmental noise especially at night are very well known, and have been the subject of numerous reports from the World Health Organisation.

We also know that serious adverse health effects including chronic severe sleep deprivation are being reported by residents living up to 10km away from 37 VESTAS V 90 wind turbines (approximately 130 metres from tower base to blade tip) located along a ridge top in Australia, at Waterloo Wind Development. At that location, I am personally aware of the occupants of five households who have either permanently left their homes, or are forced to leave regularly in order to regain their health, some under the instruction of their treating health professionals, who have included local general practitioners (family physicians) or cardiologist. The turbines have been operating almost four years.

We also know that as wind turbines become more powerful power generators (taller towers and longer blades) that their sound energy shifts down to lower frequencies, below 200 Hz. As Danish Professor Henrik Moller pointed out in his paper in 2011, this will predictably cause more “annoyance” symptoms for the neighbours. Therefore a larger buffer distance will be required, if larger wind turbines are used, in order to protect people’s physical and mental health and sleep.

We also know that when wind turbines are sited too close together, with insufficient inter turbine separation distances, that this will increase the generation of infrasound and low frequency noise from upwind bladed wind turbines, and will therefore additionally increase the adverse health effects from “annoyance” symptoms, including repetitive sleep disturbance, which are directly caused by the infrasound and low frequency noise.

The recommended inter turbine spacing separation distance to minimize the generation of turbulence, accepted by acousticians based on aeronautical engineering knowledge has historically been 5 – 8 rotor diameters. The three sites in Australia where population noise impact surveys have been conducted have all had almost all inter turbine separation distances significantly less than the recommended 5 – 8 rotor diameters. Those surveys are at Waterloo 15 (by Mrs Mary Morris), at Macarthur 16 (by Mrs Anne Schafer) and at Cullerin Range (by Mrs Patina Schneider). This may partly explain the number of reports of sleep disturbance from the operating wind turbines, and the distance of impact.

This distance of 10km for reported acoustic impacts is consistent with my knowledge of the acoustic impact zone, from individual residents reports to me, which resulted in our Explicit Cautionary Notice in June 2011 with a ten km suggested buffer zone between wind turbines and homes. Since then, residents who have become sensitized to these frequencies have reported they are noticing impacts out to 17 – 20 km and in some instances even further, particularly at night, when they are downwind, when there is heavy cloud cover, or very cold air and a temperature inversion effect, and where there are multiple wind turbines. These are all acoustic and weather factors long known to acousticians to facilitate sound energy propagation. The residents’ reports are consistent with this knowledge, yet most of the residents (who are generally farmers) have no backgound knowledge in acoustics – they simply report what they experience and the wind and weather conditions at the time.

I note that one of the acoustic consulting firms environmental assessment for a recent wind project proposal in Australia has acknowledged a distance of 10km from cumulative impacts. Marshall Day Acoustics in their report for RATCH re the Mt Emerald wind development have recently referred to 10km in the context of cumulative impacts from other wind developments, and they are now specifically referencing infrasound and low frequency noise. In section 5.6 they stated in their section “review of cumulative impact” (my emphasis in red):

“Separate wind farm developments that are in close proximity to each other have the potential to impact on the same receiver. It is therefore necessary to assess any potential cumulative noise impact on receivers, where such circumstances exist

We understand that there are no other wind farm developments currently planned or operating within 10km of the proposed MEWF. On this basis, cumulative impacts of noise from more than one operating wind farm are not considered further.”

The existence of adverse health effects including repetitive sleep disturbance out to 10km has therefore been specifically confirmed with three population impact surveys conducted in Australia at the Cullerin Range, Waterloo and Macarthur wind developments, which were all presented as evidence in the Cherry Tree legal case in Victoria in October 2013. In that case, the two tribunal members specifically acknowledged the existence of adverse health effects including sleep deprivation in their comments, despite eventually approving the development, “because it was government policy”. In their orders in April 2013, they stated:

” 116 There is evidence before the Tribunal that a number of people living close to wind farms suffer deleterious health effects. The evidence is both direct and anecdotal. There is a uniformity of description of these effects across a number of wind farms, both in south east Australia and North America. Residents complain of suffering sleep disturbance, feelings of anxiety upon awakening, headaches, pressure at the base of the neck and in the head and ears, nausea and loss of balance.

117 In some cases the impacts have been of such gravity that residents have been forced to abandon their homes.

118 On the basis of this evidence it is clear that some residents who live in close proximity to a wind farm experience the symptoms described, and that the experience is not simply imagined.”

The 2012 Waterloo survey by Mrs Morris submitted to the Cherry Tree Tribunal hearing was accepted as the only Australian research included in the recent National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) 2014 Systematic Literature Review. The other surveys, conducted in an identical manner by Schneider and Schafer for the Cherry Tree case were not completed in time for the NHMRC nominated cut off date for inclusion in its review (September, 2012), although that rule was inconsistently applied in the final NHMRC Literature review document.

Whilst there are serious concerns about the NHMRC 2014 Literature Review, with respect to the misclassification and exclusion of relevant studies, the 2014 NHMRC systematic literature review did concede that there is research evidence of sleep disturbance / deprivation, “annoyance” symptoms and poorer quality of life in wind turbine neighbours.

Conflict of interest issues concerning a number of members of the NHMRC literature review panel have been identified, and remain unresolved. It would appear these conflicts of interest have indeed had an impact on some of the decisions made by that panel, particularly with respect to directing that certain research should not be considered by the literature review authors.

These conflicts of interest are a serious matter, and were exposed in Parliament by two Federal Senators; Senator John Madigan and Senator Chris Back, who are both directly well aware of the adverse health effects experienced by wind turbine neighbours in Australia.

Other supportive relevant evidence, professional opinions and affidavits used in legal proceedings relating to the distance of impact issue are listed in Appendix 1, at the end of this letter.

Knowledge of Direct Causation Of “annoyance” Symptoms FromILFN in the 1980s

Dr Neil Kelley’s research funded by the US Government in the 1980’s, performed in collaboration with multiple research universities and institutes including two separate branches of NASA and aeronautical faculties established a direct causal relationship between wind turbine generated impulsive infrasound and low frequency noise and what were called “annoyance” symptoms, which included repetitive sleep disturbance and body vibrations.

The direct causal relationship between these frequencies and annoyance symptoms was later confirmed in a laboratory study, which Dr Neil Kelley reported to the American Wind Energy Association conference in 1987. This research resulted in a significant change to the design of horizontal axis wind turbines from downwind bladed to upwind bladed, in order to prevent or minimize the generation of these frequencies, because of their known, established, adverse health effects.

Subsequent research by NASA researchers Shepherd and Hubbard in 1989 established that the new upwind bladed wind turbines could also generate surprisingly elevated levels of infrasound and low frequency noise, when the incoming air was turbulent. Turbulent air is inevitable when wind turbines are sited too close together, hence the critical importance of ensuring sufficient inter turbine separation distances of at least 5–8 rotor diameters, mentioned previously.

However, as you know, from experiences already reported by neighbours to turbines in Slovenia, a single smaller wind turbine can cause the generation of infrasound and low frequency noise, particularly as the blade passes the tower, so one turbine can be enough to cause serious health problems for neighbours who become sensitized to the lower frequency sound energy, if it is sited too close.

Are “Annoyance” Symptoms The Same As “Wind Turbine Syndrome”?

I am aware that Dr Nina Pierpont has already written to you on this subject and confirmed that in her opinion, “Wind Turbine Syndrome”, long denied by the wind industry and some of its vocal supporters in Public Health to exist, has the same symptoms as “annoyance” symptoms, which were reported by Dr Neil Kelley’s research participants, and which have been long known to acousticians working particularly in the area of low frequency noise.

These symptoms were listed by Dr Pierpont in her study and the executive summary, and include sleep deprivation, along with a variety of other disabling symptoms such as severe nausea, vertigo, tinnitus, body vibrations, anxiety symptoms, and numerous other symptoms documented consistently by the various researchers and medical practitioners who have treated these people, which also include physiological stress symptoms.

There are an increasing number of health and acoustics professionals and researchers with direct knowledge of the severity of the reported health problems who are also using the phrase “Wind Turbine Syndrome” to describe the symptoms. These include most recently Dr Colette Bonner, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Ireland, and Dr Steven Rauch, Harvard Medical School Professor, and Director of the Massachussets Eye and Ear “Clinical Balance and Vestibular Centre”. Dr Rauch was recently reported in an article as follows:

Dr Steven Rauch, an otologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and a professor at Harvard Medical School, believes WTS is real. Patients who have come to him to discuss WTSsuffer from a “very consistent” collection of symptoms, he says. Rauch compares WTS to migraines, adding that people who suffer from migraines are among the most susceptible to turbines. There’s no existing test of either condition but “nobody questions whether or not migraine is real.”

“The patients deserve the benefit of the doubt,” Rauch says. “It’s clear from the documents that come out of the industry that they’re trying very hard to suppress the notion of WTS and they’ve done it in a way that [involves] a lot of blaming the victim.”

I note that British Acoustician Dr Geoffrey Leventhall who consults extensively for the wind industry, has acknowledged that these symptoms of “annoyance” caused by exposure to environmental noise, are identical to the symptoms of “wind turbine syndrome” and further, that the symptoms have been known to him for years. This view is reinforced by the contents of the Literature Review written by Dr Leventhall for the UK Government Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in 2003.

I have heard Dr Leventhall acknowledge this specific point that the “annoyance” symptoms are identical to “wind turbine syndrome” symptoms in a presentation he gave, via video link, to a workshop run by the National Health and Medical Research Council, in June 2011 in Canberra. The link to the presentation and powerpoint presentation are available on the National Health and Medical Research Council’s website.

So, to summarise, the key points so far:

1. There is agreement amongst the leading Acoustician used by the wind industry, and a growing number of medical practitioners, including senior government medical practitioners and leading clinicians that “Wind Turbine Syndrome” symptoms exist, and are caused by wind turbine acoustic emissions, and that they include sleep disturbance.

2. There is research from 30 years ago which established a direct causal relationship between acoustic emissions in the infrasound and low frequency noise range and “annoyance” symptoms including sleep disturbance.

3. Sleep disturbance, if prolonged, will lead to chronic sleep deprivation.

4. The clinical consequences of sleep deprivation are well known, are deleterious for both mental and physical health, and have been well documented in the research literature including the WHO.

5. Sleep deprivation is acknowledged as a method of torture, which the UN Convention against Torture prohibits, under any circumstances, even in war, and the order of a superior cannot be used to excuse culpability for allowing it to occur, or to continue. Criminal sanctions apply.

Recent acoustic survey research by Australian independent acoustician Steven Cooper, commissioned by wind developer Pacific Hydro, and conducted in collaboration with three households at Cape Bridgewater in Victoria, has provided further confirmation of the work by Dr Neil Kelley. The preliminary results of this work are publicly available on Pacific Hydro’s website, and are explained in a recent media article by Australian journalist Graham Lloyd. In the case of one research participant, there was 100% accuracy with her predictions about whether or not the turbines were operating, based on her perceptions inside the home.

This resident is partially deaf, and like others, has become progressively more sensitized to the emissions, over the five years the turbines have been operating.

What About The Wind Industry Assertions About The “Nocebo Effect” Causing the Symptoms?

This recent Cape Bridgewater evidence from research commissioned by Pacific Hydro, conducted by Steven Cooper, and that of the US Research in the 1980’s led by Dr Neil Kelley (well known for thirty years to the global wind industry), are in direct contrast to the unproven assertions by the wind industry and some of its vocal supporters that a “nocebo effect” is responsible for the symptoms being reported by the residents. A nocebo effect can be summarized as the assertion that publicity about the symptoms is itself causing them.

As Australia’s National Health and Research Council’s recent Systematic Literature Review acknowledged, there is no research evidence (collected from the residents reporting the symptoms), to support a “nocebo effect” being responsible for the resident’s symptoms.

I further note Dr Michael Nissenbaum’s salutary warning that such a diagnosis of “nocebo effect” in the absence of a proper investigation to determine the cause of the reported symptoms, would lead to a charge of professional misconduct by the health practitioner making that diagnosis in most western medical systems. As Dr Nissenbaum also points out, non medical practitioners (such as some in public health who are proposing these theories) do not have such legal obligations to their patients.

The leading proponent of the nocebo effect hypothesis is a Professor of Public Health at Sydney University with a background in sociology and epidemiology, and an expert advisor to the Climate and Health Alliance. Professor Simon Chapman is not a health practitioner, and has no clinical training or legal responsibilities including a duty of care to patients.

Professor Chapman’s active role in assisting a wind turbine product manufacturer (VESTAS) launch a global denial of any adverse health effects from its products, when VESTAS own engineer Erik Sloth had stated otherwise ten years earlier and had specifically mentioned the need for research and safer buffer distances, gives cause for concern.

Can The Frequencies be Prevented From Entering Homes?

There is no known way of preventing large industrial upwind bladed horizontal axis wind turbines from generating these frequencies, because they are generated every time the turbine blades pass the tower. In other words, they are an inherent design constraint of horizontal axis wind turbines.

Steven Cooper’s work together with work by another Australian Acoustician Les Huson has also suggested that in some locations, vibration caused by the tower resonating in the wind, without the blades turning, is also generating frequencies in the infrasound and low frequency noise range. It is possible that these frequencies may themselves also be causing symptoms and sensations for some people, as they are being reported by some particularly sensitized people when the turbine blades are not turning but the frequencies are still present.

There is no known way currently to prevent these very low frequencies entering building structures and impacting adversely on humans.

The only way to prevent the symptoms including chronic sleep disturbance and consequent severe cumulative sleep deprivation from long term exposure is to ensure the wind turbines are sited far enough away from homes and workplaces, so people do not become progressively sensitized to the sound and vibration energy, and adversely impacted by it, especially with respect to their sleep.

The Problem of Increasing Sensitisation

Dr Leventhall and Dr Neil Kelley have both acknowledged historically that increasing sensitization is known to be a problem with prolonged exposure to ILFN. More recently, ENT specialist Dr Amir Farboud and his colleagues from the United Kingdom have also raised this issue, and speculated as to the possible mechanisms.

In other words, people “do not get used to” or habituate to the low frequency sound energy – rather they become more adversely affected with prolonged exposure, unless they can remove themselves from the environment, OR the noise source is turned off.

This fact adds strength to the call for adequate buffer distances, in order to protect the health of the community.

The wind industry itself acknowledged the need for adequate buffer distances in 2004, in aVESTAS presentation to the Australian Wind Energy Association, (later the Clean Energy Council). VESTAS engineer Erik Sloth conceded that the noise models used at that time were not accurate, and that there was a need for adequate buffer distances, and a need for more research.

Industrial wind turbines have increased significantly in size since this presentation was given, ten years ago. As previously stated, Professor Henrik Moller’s research clearly showed that as the power generating capacity of the wind turbines increase, so too does the proportion of sound energy in the low frequency and infrasonic range, and therefore it can be predicted there will be more “annoyance” symptoms for the neighbours.

Concluding remarks

All Slovenian public officials, including politicians and public servants, who are involved in approving these projects, and responsible for health and noise pollution regulation subsequently, need to be mindful of the obligations of Slovenia from the UN Convention Against Torture.

They need to ensure they are aware of the very latest research in this area, as well as historical research from thirty years ago, which clearly demonstrated a direct causal link between wind turbine generated impulsive infrasound and low frequency noise and serious adverse health effects, known as “annoyance”.

If this particular project is approved, with such large powerful wind turbines so close to homes, it is inevitable that some Slovenian residents will be seriously harmed, from the consequences of cumulative sleep disturbance and long term sleep deprivation alone. This is regardless of what other symptoms individual residents may develop because of individual pre existing vulnerabilities or risk factors, identified by Dr Pierpont’s research, and confirmed or acknowledged by others since including Dr Leventhall (namely extremes of age, migraines, motion sickness and existing inner ear pathology).

I am happy to provide further specific information on request.

Yours sincerely

Sarah Laurie,
Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, Flinders University, 1995

CEO, Waubra Foundation

See following pages for the list of attachments to this letter, and for the appendix.

Attachments (downloadable at the following links)

Waubra Foundation: Recent Summary of Adverse Health Effects, 1st June, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/wind-turbine-noise-adverse-health-effects-june-2014/

Waubra Foundation: Open letter to NHMRC re flaws in 2014 Systematic Literature Review, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/waubra-foundation-open-letter-nhmrc-re-systematic-literature– review/
Waubra Foundation: Submission to the Australian Federal Government RET Review, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/renewable-energy-target-review-waubra-foundation-submission– 2014/

Explicit Cautionary Notice http://waubrafoundation.org.au/about/explicit-cautionary-notice/

Explicit Warning Notice http://waubrafoundation.org.au/2013/explicit-warning-notice/

Letter to AMA and recent literature review, Emeritus Professor Alun Evans, Epidemiologist, Ireland, 2014 http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/evans-prof-emeritus-alun-dismiss-any-adverse-effects-absurd-view-mounting-evidence/

Letter to AMA by Swedish Otoneurologist Dr Hakan Enbomhttp://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/enbom-h-infrasound-from-wind-turbines-can-trigger-migraine-and-related-symptoms/

Letter to AMA from Danish Occupational Health Physician, Dr Mauri Johansson, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/johansson-dr-mauri-m-d-highly-alarming-position-paper-from-medical-association-ama /

Letter to AMA from Professor Robert McMurtry, Canada, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/prof-robert-mcmurtry-former-dean-medicine-writes-ama/

Letter to AMA from NZ scientist Dr Bruce Rapley, New Zealand. 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/rapley-b-letter-ama-audibility-and-effects-infrasound/

Article by Professor Salt and Professor Lichtenhan in the Winter Edition of Acoustics Today, 2014http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/salt-n-lichtenhan-j-t-how-does-wind-turbine-noise-affect-people/

Physicians for Human Rights, “Leave No Marks” 2007 with particular reference to pp 22 – 26 relating to the use of sleep deprivation and sensory bombardment with noise as methods of torture http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/reports/leave-no-marks-report-2007.html

Appendix 1 — Evidence for 10km acoustic impact zone from 2 – 3 MW turbines

Waubra Foundation’s Explicit Cautionary Notice, June 2011 first mentioned problems out to 10kmhttp://waubrafoundation.org.au/about/explicit-cautionary-notice/

Acoustic evidence of wind turbine noise extending out to 10km

NASA research from 1985 by William Willshire http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/nasa-long-range-down-wind-propagation-low-frequency-sound/

Professor Colin Hansen’s ongoing work relating to wind turbine noise out to 10km from Waterloo wind turbines is not yet published, however his opinion based on acoustic evidence was included in his letter to the Victorian Department of Health, regarding false and misleading statements about infrasound in their technical document issued in 2013http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/prof-colin-hansen-writes-victorian-dept-health-recent-wind-arms-health-doc/

Steven Cooper’s acoustic data from Waterloo wind development (8km)http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/are-wind-farms-too-close-communities/

Mr Les Huson’s expert evidence from the Cherry Tree case, relating to Macarthur, where he found that there was no attenuation of infrasound between 1.8km and 6.4 km from the nearest wind turbines, indicating that wind turbine generated infrasound will be travelling for very large distances (much greater than 10km) http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/huson-l-expert-evidence-at-vcat-cherry-tree-hearing/

The various population noise impact surveys done in Australia are here:http://waubrafoundation.org.au/library/community-noise-impact-surveys/
Waterloo, South Australia – VESTAS V 90 (37 along a ridge)

Mrs Mary Morris’s 2012 survey conducted at Waterloo in South Australia. This survey was the only Australian research included in the 2014 NHMRC Systematic Literature Reviewhttp://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/waterloo-wind-farm-survey-2012/

This 2012 survey by Mrs Morris was based on one conducted in 2011 by Frank Wang, an Adelaide University Masters student, but the population surveyed in Wang’s survey was only out to 5km http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/evaluation-wind-farm-noise-policies-south-australia/

Mrs Morris then compiled this information in 2013 showing what happened when the turbines at Waterloo were off for a week http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/morris-m-waterloo-case-series-preliminary-report/

Cullerin Range, NSW, 2 MW Repower turbines, sited on a ridge

Mrs Schneider’s 2012 and 2013 population noise impact surveys show the extent of the sleep deprivation. Nothing has been done about the severe night time noise related sleep disturbance and adverse health impact for these NSW residents by any NSW government department, despite many complaints which are documented in the 2013 survey.

http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/cullerin-range-wind-farm-survey-august-2012/

http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/schneider-p-cullerin-range-wind-farm-survey-follow-up-july-august-2013/

Macarthur Wind Development, 140 3 MW V 112 VESTAS wind turbines, sited on flat land in Victoria

This survey was conducted only 6 months since the wind development commenced operating. Residents report being far more adversely impacted now, because of the predictable and known adverse cumulative health effects of chronic sleep deprivation and chronic stress.http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/macarthur-wind-energy-facility-preliminary-survey/

Evidence from Macarthur Wind Development Residents and acoustician Mr Les Huson was heard during the Cherry Tree Court case before the Victorian Civil Administrative Appeal Tribunal in 2013. Links to affidavits from Macarthur residents relating to that court case are below:

Mrs Maria Linke (lives 5km away, with her husband and four children – sleep adverse affected immediately) http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/linke-m-witness-statement-vcat-cherry-tree-hearing/

Mrs Jan Hetherington, widow, glass artist, working from her home 3km away from nearest wind turbine http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/hetherington-j-witness-statement-vcat-cherry-tree-tribunal/

Mr Andrew Gardner, Farmer, home is 1.8km away from nearest wind turbinehttp://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/gardner-statement-vcat-cherry-tree-hearing/ (1.8km away)

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